Announcing Xconomy Intersect: GGV, Accolade, OfferUp, Textio & More

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The most interesting innovations are found where disciplines, industries, and cultures intersect—where intelligent machines edit human writers, drones plant trees, and cloud computing accelerates the transformation of healthcare, for example.

Xconomy is excited to announce our upcoming Seattle event, an exploration of the crossroads from which the next world-changing ideas may emerge. Join us Thursday, Dec. 8, for an afternoon of intriguing conversations with top investors, hot startup CEOs, a political historian, a prominent science fiction author, and many more. These innovation leaders are remixing the Pacific Northwest’s expertise in software, mobile, commerce, and agriculture, with the goal of tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges and business opportunities.

—Hans Tung, a venture capital investor at GGV Capital ranked No. 21 on the latest Forbes Midas List, has had a particular knack for picking winners in mobile commerce, both in the U.S. and China. He’s on the boards of companies with three of the top six iOS shopping apps in the App Store: Wish, Poshmark, and Bellevue, WA-based OfferUp, which is reinventing local buying and selling for a mobile generation. Tung will join OfferUp co-founder and CEO Nick Huzar—and recent hire Peter Wilson, most recently engineering and site director at Google in Kirkland, WA—for a wide-ranging chat on disruptive companies and technologies.

—Margaret O’Mara, an associate professor of history at University of Washington, who focuses on the connections between politics and the technology industry, will help us unpack the outcome of the election and what it may mean for the innovation economy. Her latest book, Pivotal Tuesdays, connects the elections of 1912, 1932, 1968, and 1992 to the evolution of the economy.

—Get ready to dive into the many ways technology is reinventing traditional Northwest industries such as agriculture and forestry with Lav Khot, a Washington State University associate professor deploying drones in vineyards; Grant Canary, co-founder and CEO of DroneSeed, which is putting them to work for the timber industry; and Virginia Emery, an entomologist and CEO of Seattle startup BetaHatch, who is betting that insects may be the future of farming.

We will have more details, including a full agenda, in the coming weeks. But don’t wait to reserve your spot. Seating is limited at our South Lake Union venue, 415 Westlake, and the best deals can be had now. We’re offering a steep early-bird discount and a small number of reduced-price tickets for startups and students.